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Meanwhile, the middle middle class and lower middle class, as well as the middle class as a whole, are not. And the top 1% take home 49.9% of all income. Also,

Meanwhile, the middle middle class and lower middle class, as well as the middle class as a whole, are not. And the top 1% take home 49.9% of all income. Also, this article has an auto-playing video that is loud as hell and FOLLOWS YOU AROUND THE PAGE.

dang 10y ago
Ok, we found a different URL for you and changed it from http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/21/news/economy/upper-middle-class/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/21/news/economy/upper-middle-cl.... But please, no more all caps! (That's actually in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
- bryanlarsen 10y ago
  Here's another from the same report: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/the-middle-class-is-shrinking-because-many-people-are-getting-richer.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/the...
- thescriptkiddie 10y ago
  Thank you for your service.
cpursley 10y ago
I'm not defending the top 1%, but that corresponds fairly closely to the percentage of overall individual income taxes collected from them (45.7%)^1. People and politicians like to bemoan the top 1% for not paying their "fair share", but that's a significant amount of tax considering 45% pay no income tax.^2 ^1 http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-does-1-percent-pay-in-taxes/ http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-does-1-percent... ^2 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fede...
- khuey 10y ago
  Substantial amounts of the government is funded through non-income taxes. Like the 1.5T or so of Social Security and Medicare spending.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Meanwhile, the middle middle class and lower middle class, as well as the middle class as a whole, are not. And the top 1% take home 49.9% of all income. No, they don't. The top 5% have a little over 20% of all income [0]. [0] https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-income-households/h02ar.xls https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...
- thescriptkiddie 10y ago
  My bad, that was supposed to say top 10%.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    It's more like the top quintile (20%) has around 50% of the income, see the same source in my last post upthread.
    - thescriptkiddie 10y ago
      The top quintile had 51.2% of aggregate income in 2014, or 2.56 times their share. But things rapidly get worse as you go up from there: the top 5% alone had 21.9% of aggregate income in 2014, or 4.38 times their share. My source for the top 10% having 49.9% of aggregate income in 2014 was Figure 9 of Saez, Emmanuel. "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States", on page 9 of the PDF linked below. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2014.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2014.pdf

dang 10y ago

Ok, we found a different URL for you and changed it from http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/21/news/economy/upper-middle-class/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2016/06/21/news/economy/upper-middle-cl.... But please, no more all caps! (That's actually in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

bryanlarsen 10y ago
Here's another from the same report: http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/the-middle-class-is-shrinking-because-many-people-are-getting-richer.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2016/06/the...
thescriptkiddie 10y ago
Thank you for your service.

cpursley 10y ago

I'm not defending the top 1%, but that corresponds fairly closely to the percentage of overall individual income taxes collected from them (45.7%)^1. People and politicians like to bemoan the top 1% for not paying their "fair share", but that's a significant amount of tax considering 45% pay no income tax.^2 ^1 http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-does-1-percent-pay-in-taxes/ http://www.bankrate.com/financing/wealth/what-does-1-percent... ^2 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2016-02-24 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/45-of-americans-pay-no-fede...

khuey 10y ago
Substantial amounts of the government is funded through non-income taxes. Like the 1.5T or so of Social Security and Medicare spending.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Meanwhile, the middle middle class and lower middle class, as well as the middle class as a whole, are not. And the top 1% take home 49.9% of all income. No, they don't. The top 5% have a little over 20% of all income [0]. [0] https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-series/historical-income-households/h02ar.xls https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/tables/time-ser...

thescriptkiddie 10y ago
My bad, that was supposed to say top 10%.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  It's more like the top quintile (20%) has around 50% of the income, see the same source in my last post upthread.
  - thescriptkiddie 10y ago
    The top quintile had 51.2% of aggregate income in 2014, or 2.56 times their share. But things rapidly get worse as you go up from there: the top 5% alone had 21.9% of aggregate income in 2014, or 4.38 times their share. My source for the top 10% having 49.9% of aggregate income in 2014 was Figure 9 of Saez, Emmanuel. "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States", on page 9 of the PDF linked below. https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2014.pdf https://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2014.pdf